<p>I just thought I'd make this ranking for fun since I was bored =/ I didn't base it on anything statistical, just really included:how desirable I thought they were to prospective frosh, how strong their academics seem to be, prestige, selectivity, their reach, and admittedly a little personal bias. I would hope this doesn't degenerate into one of these Duke vs Berkeley threads...but I guess it wouldn't be a big deal.</p>
<p>So here it goes:</p>
<p>1.Harvard
2.Yale
3.Stanford
4.Princeton
5.MIT
6.Caltech
7.Columbia
8.University of Pennsylvania
9.University of Chicago
10.Brown
11.Dartmouth
11.Duke
13.Berkeley
13.Cornell
15.Johns Hopkins University
15.Northwestern University
17.Washington University in St Louis
17.Rice University
19.University of Michigan
19.University of Virginia
21.Georgetown University
22.Vanderbilt University
23.UCLA
24.Notre Dame
25. Emory University
25. Carnegie Mellon University</p>
<p>Notes: I tried to avoid ties in the beginning because I generally think that's the p***y way out, but then I realized that a lot of schools ought to be tied. Like for instance Cornell and Berkeley are such similar schools, IMO, that they ought to have the same rank. I was going to do a 4-way tie with Northwestern and JHU with the other two, but I wasn't going to suffer a 4-way tie. I also think I sort of shafted the southern schools, but hey, that's how I felt. I also included 26 schools in the top 25, but hey that's not a biggie. Anything else? Oh yeah, feel free to criticize (though no ad hominems) and make your own rankings. Also, it's NOT statistical in anyway =)</p>
<p>Cheers!</p>